Rock look to rebound in New England

Rock look to rebound in New England

The Toronto Rock flew from Vancouver to Boston on Saturday. That should have given it plenty of time to reflect on its worst half of lacrosse this season.

From Boston, there’s a two-hour bus ride to the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., where the Rock will try to salvage the weekend against the New England Black Wolves on Sunday at 1 p.m.

The Rock gave up 11 goals in the second half and had no positive energy in a 14-11 loss to the Vancouver Stealth on Friday night at the Langley Events Centre.

“They were much better than us in the second half,” head coach Matt Sawyer said. “We had some opportunities to put that game away and we took a few shortcuts and it came back to bite us.”

For the first half, Toronto looked like the team that dominated the Stealth 13-7 at the Air Canada Centre last weekend. The Rock took a 6-3 lead to halftime on two of Tom Schreiber’s four goals on the night and two more by Casey Beirnes. Toronto’s power-play, the weakest part of the team’s game this season, connected on both its opportunities.

The wheels began to fall off in the second when Vancouver went on a 4-1 run early in the third including a goal by Rhys Duch that beat Rose between his feet. Duch surpassed the 800-point mark in his NLL career in the game.

Toronto went on a 3-0 run of its own in the third quarter but the hosts scored twice to end the period. Jordan Durston had one of the highlight-reel goals of the season when he fought off the checks of Jeff Gilbert and Latrell Harris and slammed the ball inside the crossbar from behind the net.

The Stealth (6-8) then scored the first five goals in the final period to put it away. Durston showed his skill again with a no-look, over-the-shoulder effort that beat Rose as he finished with a hat trick. Corey Small, who is back on top of the NLL scoring lead with 89 points, had two of his four on the night in that run.

Stephan Leblanc and Reid Reinholdt both had five points on the night for Toronto (8-6). Rose finished with 38 saves and Brandon Miller saw his first action late.

The Black Wolves (6-7) beat the Rock 10-9 in overtime on March 3 in Toronto. Kevin Buchanan had four goals that night. Shawn Evans currently leads the team with 77 points, on pace to crack the 100-point mark for the fifth consecutive season. Kevin Crowley leads the team in goals with 31. They lost 18-13 last weekend to the Calgary Roughnecks.

“We get a chance to bounce back with a big divisional game against a team we’re chasing,” Black Wolves head coach Glenn Clark told NLL.com. “Everybody is in the right frame of mind. We sort of recalibrated ourselves and everybody is ready to go after it on Sunday.”